Karl-Birger Blomdahl (1916-1968) and Ingvar Lidholm (1921- ) were two leading figures in modern Swedish music. While studying in Stockholm they created a study circle known as the Monday Group. Regarded as anti-romanticists, Blomdahl and Lidholm revitalized musical creation by prioritizing compositional technique (as in hantverk, i.e. craft), melodic line and Gestalt concepts such as organicism.

Following a study of this shared historical, aesthetic and theoretical framework, this thesis proposes a detailed analysis of thirty works by Blomdahl and Lidholm, dating from the 1940s. Based on the initial aesthetic and theoretical context and also on the theories of Schenker and Meyer, the analytical method used enables a graphical and textual representation of the compositional coherence and dynamic of the respective works.

This thesis establishes the essential melodic, tonal and organic divergences in the musical languages of Blomdahl and Lidholm. Additionally, this thesis shows that the notions of linearity, dissonance and counterpoint have a deeper significance in Blomdahl’s and Lidholm’s respective musical languages than is to be found in many texts dating from this period. Finally, this thesis highlights aesthetic and compositional components that significantly invigorate modern music in Sweden.

Melodic Structures through the Syncretic Method: Towards a Deeper Understanding of Musical Elaborations and Gestures

Teaching melody comes usually at best down to a necessary but basic phraseology, without any regard to melodic elaborations, intervallic functions, and musical gestures. However, the syncretic method gives renewed perspectives on melodic analysis, and on composition and performance. It critically gathers principles and tools mainly from the theories of Heinrich Schenker and Leonard B. Meyer, and from the pedagogical method of Emile Jaques-Dalcroze. Basically, the Schenkerian approach is central to the syncretic method because of its structure through synchronic levels; the Meyerian approach is important because of its melodic classification and terminology, which refer to gestural representations (such as axial melodies); and Dalcroze Eurhythmics comes within the mentioned theoretical framework by bringing a physical and cognitive dimension.

The syncretic method is concerned with the functions played by disjunct and conjunct intervals within melodic structures. It enables to represent these functions and the melodic elaborations through three levels (surface, intermediate, and deep). The mental approach and understanding of melodic processes are deepened through bodily training. Thus, the syncretic method clarifies the melodic unfolding, its main directed motion and its successive gestural ornamentations.

This paper aims to present how accessible and beneficial the syncretic method is for students at different levels. Thus, it requires two main comparisons. The first one regards the comparison between not trained and trained students within using the method. Questions to be answered are: what knowledge do students get quantitatively and qualitatively, when studying and applying this method? How efficient and useful is the method and its learning? Does the method influence the students’ intellectual approach of the music and their practical musicianship?

The second comparison concerns the students involved, all from Stockholm. The first group gathers students from a sixth-form music school, the second group studies at the university, and the third group follows the Eurhythmics program at the Royal College of Music. Is the method possibly as efficient for all these students or do their respective musical education play a role regarding the learning, and the response to the method?

The study will be done through a series of workshops, mainly based on music of the common practice area and the 20th century.

A systematic presentation at the conference will highlight the syncretic method and the results of this study. This paper will thus put forward what the method may imply for music education, especially regarding a renewed approach of the melodic phenomenon.

King Gustav III founded the Swedish National Theater and Opera, participated in the court theater as playwright, director and actor and he was rightly called the Theater King. The King’s passion for acting was perceived in the past as a psychological weakness, which won him the appellation of wimp (fjant). However, Gustav III presents a special interest as a performer of the role of an enlightened monarch according to the philosophy of the epoch of Enlightenment, particularly that of Voltaire. This research project aims at challenging the stereotyped perception of Gustav III, and presents him as a performing king who purposely used his acting ability to achieve political gain.

The theoretical foundation of this study of the King’s use of theater is described in Chapter I. The theory of playing by Johan Huizinga and the theory of theatricality of Nikolai Evreinov, from the point of view of culture and anthropology, respectively, explain how playing is the basis of human living. Yuri Lotman’s semiotic approach is applied to formulate the concept of theatrical playing meant to influence the spectators, which is at the core of the Pageants in court and in public, used by Gustav III to display his power. Finally, but most importantly, the theories of Josette Féral, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Willmar Sauter present theatrical playing as an interactive performative communication between the performer and the beholders that became the core of Royal Encounters, which were the most effective political tools of Gustav III.

The ensuing chapters are devoted to the different activities of the King related to theater, understood as the sum of interactions between the performer and the spectators that can occur within the walls of a theater or outside them. Theatricalized actions transported into life and directed to the beholders (Pageants) and the interaction between the performing King and his beholding subjects (Royal Encounters) are presented and examined. Examples of Pageants are chosen from court life, such as entertaining divertissements and amateur theater; Public Pageants were held at occasions such as the birth of a royal prince and King Gustav’s departure to the war with Russia. Among the Royal Encounters the coup d’etat in 1772 and the struggle against the nobility at the Riksdag of 1789 can be mentioned.

The conclusion establishes the concordance between the performing King and his beholding subjects leading to real achievements in politics. This investigation sheds light on the different theatrical means the King employed in crafting political tasks and choosing appropriate political masks. Gustav III was a master of acting; thus, the decisive factor in each of his theatricalized actions was not so much his art at playwriting and directing, as his ability as a performer. In addition, the King could assert his royal power by performing his own idealized social role of an enlightened monarch.

The concept of an authentic person who makes his/her ‘true inner’ visible on the body’s surface reappears as an ideal throughout history. What has undergone significant changes, however, is what exactly constitutes authentic bodily appearance. What ‘inner’ is represented and how exactly is it made visible on the body? My article focuses on two instances in which stagings of the authentic body represent an important issue: First in the French Enlightenment and subsequently in contemporary makeover culture (which originated in the Western world, but is no longer limited to it).

Images of bodies revealing their ‘true inner’ took on particular importance in the Enlightenment when writers such as Rousseau used them as counterpoints to what they rejected as the ancien regime ’s affected bodies. One might assume today –in the aftermath of late 20th century poststructuralism, postmodernism and feminism –that any notion of bodily ‘authenticity’ or for that matter ‘essential selfhood’ would be curtly dismissed. Yet, the image of an authentic body that reveals a ‘deserving’ inner self is exactly what is staged in most popular media today.

18th century acting theories suggested that ‘naturally expressive’ gestures could be conveyed –indeed reveal feelings –without any mediation. What has changed since then, I will argue, is that the ideal authentic body in makeover-culture has to be thoroughly and visibly worked for.

For the presentation of his autumn/winter 2012 collection in Paris and subsequently in Copenhagen, Danish designer Henrik Vibskov installed a mobile catwalk. The article investigates the choreographic impact of this scenography on those who move through it. Drawing on Dance Studies, the analytical focus centres on how the catwalk scenography evokes a ‘defiguration’ of the walking models and to what effect.

Vibskov’s mobile catwalk draws attention to the walk, which is a key element of models’ performance but which usually functions in fashion shows merely to present clothes in the most advantageous manner. Stepping on the catwalk’s sloping, moving surfaces decelerates the models’ walk and makes it cautious, hesitant and shaky: suddenly the models lack exactly the affirmative, staccato, striving quality of motion, and the condescending expression that they perform on most contemporary catwalks. Vibskov’s catwalk induces what the dance scholar Gabriele Brandstetter has labelled a ‘defigurative choregoraphy’: a straying from definitions, which exist in ballet as in other movement-based genres, of how a figure should move and appear (1998). The catwalk scenography in this instance determines the models’ walk. Furthermore, letting the models set off sound through triggers with attached sound samples gives them an implied agency. This calls into question the designer’s unrestricted authorship.

On Multiple Appearances: An Analysis of the Performing Body in Kitt Johnson's Drift In the article, I challenge the prevalent use of phenomenology in dance scholarship, which focusses on the dancer's experience of her body when dancing. This approach often implies the problematic assumption that the dancer's experience is immediately transferred to the spectators who, in turn, are universally 'moved' by her dancing body. Instead of acknowledging that dance is a product of historically and culturally specific circumstances, such an analytical perspective ultimately tends to mystify dance. In this article I propose a different use of analytical tools in dance scholarship: I employ phenomenological reduction and epoche to focus on how dancing bodies appear in a stage context. To test the ability of these tools to explore dancing bodies from a third-person perspective, I analyze Danish choreographer Kitt Johnson's solo performance Drift (2011), focussing on her variable physical appearance. While phenomenology helps me to describe the multiple and radically different guises Johnson assumes in her piece, my analysis does not, ultimately, aim to distil a truer, more real being from her appearances, as is often the case in phenomenological analyses. Instead, I complement my analytical approach with the Deleuzian notion of becoming animal, suggesting that Johnson stages what, in Judith Butler's terms, could be called a critical contingency of bodily appearance.